Safak Villa
Sector
Private
Location
Ankara Turkey
Year
2021
Site Area
10.000 m²
Construction Area
2.000 m²
Design Team
Yasemin Işık
Mehmet Mert Işık
Åžafak Villa was designed for a family we met at the beginning of the COVID pandemic and approached us with an extraordinary program of needs. The first and most important wish of the parents was to make their three boys, two of whom are small and one of them is a teenager, live with them as long as possible.
They were planning to take their aging parents and perhaps the nurse in addition to their permanent aide. Besides this dream, in which the number of households can increase from six to twelve, outbuildings were designed for two additional families who are going to live with the family. The property owner already had a yoga studio in Çankaya that she was running. While developing the project, the idea stemmed out that it was to integrate this studio into the house and distribute some of the 9 acres of land on which the house sits so that the people who come to the studio can also benefit. Furthermore, as a biologist, who is fond of all kinds of plants and water, the landlady has added her dreams of organic farming, ornamental or herb ponds, and a greenhouse to the landscape list. The ultimate but most crucial thing on the list was to assemble an eco-friendly house.
The idea that triggered the preliminary project was to take the children to a thoroughly separate floor by presenting their own living space to them that provides them with a direct connection with the outdoors by allowing them to stay at home for a long time. While providing this, we decided to turn this outdoor space into a zen garden, which will be created as a shooting area.
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Due to the sincere support of this idea from the owners, the three bedrooms for children, their living spaces, the fitness room, the semi-open living area, and the yoga studio took their places on the basement floor to support this courtyard.
Located in the south-southwest direction, where the entrance of the villa is placed, this garden, on the one hand, took a semi-social identity thanks to the studio having a separate entrance from the outside. How to keep the people who use the studio away from the children's rooms has been arosed as another problem.
The zen garden, which will welcome you when you leave the studio with an event terrace in front of it, is placed as an elegant barrier between public and personal spaces with a slight level difference and 220 m² sizes. Additionally, the facade line of the children's rooms was removed behind an eave to protect the children's rooms from the summer sun and direct radiation, which can overheat the children's rooms due to their south-southeast orientation. Nevertheless, to enable direct light to come inside on less sunny days in winter, some parts of the eaves have been emptied and an arrangement has been made. To benefit from the thermal protection of the soil and for the pictorial effect, the tilted decks above the studio and semi-open seating area were utilized as landscape elements. The main entrance of the building facing south was placed in secret following the semi-public character of this facade of the building.
The ornamental pond and plant pond, which mimic the courtyard formed by this L mass as a two-dimensional shadow, soften and emphasize the consistency created by the L effect. In addition, the luminaries inside the ornamental pool with a depth of 10 cm can give light to the pool below by being protected from the extreme effects, and the reflection of the ripple of the water above makes the use of the pool much more enjoyable during swimming.
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On the first floor, there is a guest room with a bathroom, a suite with a bedroom, a dressing room, WC, a bathroom, a small living room, and study rooms for parents. By positioning the suite separately from the whole house, privacy is strengthened. The study rooms, on the other hand, are connected to the rest of the house by a bridge that follows the entrance and the Zen courtyard; however, it is deliberately separated from the hall by a mezzanine barrier.
To prevent somebody looking for the studio entrance will not accidentally find themselves at the door of the house, at the same time, to give a clue to ones looking for the main entrance, a wall rising like an anchor was added, which fixes the building to the courtyard. This wall took on the tasks of shielding the ground floor saloon from the rising midday sun and discouraging passengers, who might have lost their way, from descending into the ground floor garden belonging to the hosts.​ The wooden grid-covered part with continuous LED lighting hidden behind it, which composes the entrance part of the house, can be transformed into a lantern for any celebration preferred to organize in the forecourt or event that belongs to the studio.
On the ground floor, there is the entrance mass and the living room, as well as the guest WC and kitchen. The hall opens onto the gardens, especially from both of the long facades. At its rear, it associates with a semi-open seating area. In this place, where both gardens are benefited from good weather, a kitchen and dining area with direct outside access, a barbecue, and a wood oven are located for the users, who may have fun in the garden.
Sliding wooden lattice shutters were designed to protect the southern facade of the hall from the summer sun. The building changes the language on the north and northeast facades, and it becomes more transparent and more intimate since the entire 2-story mass surrounding the backyard in an L form consists of private areas for the owners. Also, we showed an effort to maximize the use of daylight as we headed north.
It is aimed to employ sunshades in three or four different ways in the facade configuration, to make the orientation correctly, as well as to benefit from the thermal protection of the soil by burying all of the functionally possible parts of the buildings into the soil, to accomplish a nature-friendly architectural design. In addition to these architectural arrangements, maximum action has been demonstrated in order to use green technologies in mechanical systems.
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Calculations were completed for the heat pump, and it was deserted at the last moment because the carbon footprint was much more than the use of natural gas. The whole terrace roof surface is covered with photovoltaic cells, and the energy obtained is used to heat water.
As the gray water system was not found to be efficient after the detailed studies, the rainwater collected from the roof surfaces is gathered and pumped into the puddles from a separate tank. In the landscape, by using particular layering and grass protective elements to balance the vehicle pressure, the vehicle roads and parking areas within the boundaries of the land are defined as vegetative areas, not as hard ground. Grass, which requires a lot of maintenance, fertilizer, and water, was used only in the northern courtyard so that ground cover plants requiring less water and maintenance were preferred on all remaining surfaces (including parking lots and driveways).
A focus on the mass positioned around the Zen courtyard echoes in the interior design by centering the staircase around the Zen courtyard like a rock spreading waves on the encircling pebbles. In material selection, full-body ceramics resembling natural stones and pebble grains are used. By adding a fireplace, an aquascape, and a sculpture to the staircase, to strengthen its central function has been intended in terms of aesthetics and usage. The Zen garden, which inspires the house design in general, has inevitably let the Far East tones extend throughout the whole configuration of the rest of the villa.
The interpretation of 'Shoji' panels, which enable to use of the bathroom and dressing areas integrated into the room or openly in the children's rooms, the patterned acrylic panels in the studio and elsewhere in the house, the lighting selections simulating a lantern, and stylizations in furniture are all outcomes of the same theme. Some parts of the house also have more than one function, inspired by the diverse spaces and fluidity created by the opening and closing of the Shojis. The tearoom in the studio can take on different functions such as a library, a meeting or dining room, a meditation room, or, when it is necessary, a seminar room.
The study rooms on the first floor can also be separated by sliding folding panels and used in three different ways. In version one, two small rooms open into a study at the end, in the second, if it is desired, two rooms and the meeting part can be combined and used as a large room, and as a third option, small meeting parts of both study rooms can be added to their ends. These rooms can be transformed into guest bedrooms within 10 minutes by transforming the furniture without removing them from the room. Further, when it is demanded, the end part is supplemented with a kitchenette and a small bathroom, which can be furnished as a tiny guest living area.